Health

When the carrot on the stick has two legs

Here are the plans for tracking my runs, as I alluded to in a previous entry. I’m using the Nike+ system, which you can get a look at on Apple’s website. It requires:

  • iPod nano, iTouch 2.0 or IPhone 3GS
  • Nike + iPod Sport Kit
  • Nike + shoes

You don’t need to spend $150 or so on the shoes as a number of companies sell pouches that attach to the laces of whatever shoes you own, allowing you to insert the sensor in a secure fashion that prevents your wallet from crying, a definite bonus.

I have a nano and found setup very simple. I opted for the default female voice who perkily counts off the time in five minute increments and kept the distance to kilometers since I am working around the idea of 5k runs. My first run, set to 30 minutes, went without any hitches last Friday. This week I moved up to 35 minutes and created a few unofficial goals for myself based on Monday’s run. On that day I ran 6.48 km at an average pace of 5:27/km. My fastest pace was 5:12/km. On Friday I improved the distance to 6.53 km, the pace to 5.23/km and fastest pace to 5.01/km, just missing my goal of 5 minutes even.

Nothing comes without a price, though, and my calves, already stiff going into the run, were what scientists call “really really sore” even before I had completed the run. I definitely exerted them in a way I didn’t intend to, but now I have a much better idea of where my limits are and I can begin working toward improving my speed and time without yoinking my muscles silly in the process. On the plus side, my stamina held up nicely and if I had been running at a consistent pace instead of bursting the first and last few laps, I could have kept going without any problem.

I find one of the best motivators when jogging is to have someone on the path ahead of me. I always want to pass them. In most cases I do, so yay me. On Friday a guy started jogging ahead of me and I was already a good six or seven laps in, so not exactly bursting with energy. I decided to at least keep pace with him but eventually decided to pass. About half a lap later the cheeky bugger then passes me and it was on. If you pass someone and they later pass you, you are now dueling. It’s like the law of running. I picked up the pace, opting to get close to judge whether he would start flagging or not. He kept moving steadily along and we neared the northeast corner of the path where it dips down into a bend and then back up. There was a woman ahead of us doing the equivalent of Grandma driving below the speed limit. She was on the right, he was on the left and the gap between them was rapidly closing. I made my move and burst ahead into the dip, picking up speed and putting a little distance between myself and my duelist. I didn’t check back but I think he stopped not too long after. It didn’t matter. I had won. Woo!

This is what endorphins do to you.

I’m undecided on next week’s course of action, but will likely continue on the 35 minute runs, looking to improve my performance while avoiding injury. A summary of my last five runs is now available on the right side of the blog near the bottom. It looks just like this (and for some reason seems to gently inflate the results):

All Dogs Go to China Creek Park

On Friday there were more dogs at China Creek Park than I’d ever seen in four months of jogging there. It was weird, like it was some sort of Take Your Dog to the Park Or Else day. I always keep my eye on dogs when I’m running, especially the ones not on leashes (about half of them, typically) because, like gravel-throwing little girls you never know when a dog might do something you don’t expect. As it turns out, a chocolate lab came running up from behind and on my left and I didn’t see him until he was cutting in front of me close enough for a little dog-human contact. If he’d been a toy dog I probably would have crushed him under a foot. Unintentionally, I mean.

The actual jog went fairly dismally even if you don’t count dog collisions, as I checked my time at only 19 minutes in and called it quits just short of 23. I’d skipped the previous jog due to tender muscles around the shins and man, even skipping one run is noticeable.

Today’s went significantly better, however. I ran for 31:46 and have decided to add an extra minute onto each run for awhile and see how it goes. I have some plans for tracking distance and time that I may be implementing soon.

YAJU

No, not some sort of sushi dish, it’s Yet Another Jogging Update.

I completed the Couch-to-5K plan on schedule, running about 6.38k on the final day. I then took the next two days off as the muscles around my shins were a bit tender and I wanted to avoid shin splints. The jog after the days off was a wee bit harder, as a result. Perhaps slightly more than a wee bit.

Today I jogged for 30 minutes under the influence of a head cold and it was surprisingly not that bad. Stupid cold.

My ambitions for the rest of the week are modest — just run 30 minutes. This coming Saturday I may try hooking up with the FrontRunners group for their Saturday morning jog. Can I be at Stanley Park by 9 a.m.? We’ll find out!

Mystery of the Missing Minutes: A Jogging Puzzle

I am in the final week of the Couch to 5k program (Week 9) and on Monday I did my first run in wet weather. The path at the park had a few puddles along the edges and was a bit squishy in spots but overall the experience was fine. Pretty much anything is better compared to the 30°C weather we’d been having (I will revise this after the first snow of the winter). I completed the mandated 30 minutes but something seemed amiss.

Going with how the plan equated time and distance I early on concluded that one circuit of the path — which takes about 3 minutes to run — equaled about 1 km. The final 30 minute runs in Week 9 would therefore require running 10 laps.

I started my run and by lap 7 I was thinking it was going faster than I expected. I decided to check the time after the 9th lap, which would put me at about 27 minutes in, more or less. Instead, I found only 18 minutes or so had elapsed. I kept running until I hit the 30 minute mark and by final count had done 14 or 15 laps instead of the expected 10.

Either my pace was significantly better than expected or my math sucked. Knowing how this whole thing began I suspected the latter. I was compelled to find out for certain and purchased a pedometer from MEC. My first task was to measure my stride length. To do so I took the tape measure to the walk in the backyard and marked out a 10 m section. I then walked it twice and verified 11 steps. 10×10= 100m and 11×10 = 110 steps, therefore my stride length is 100 ÷ 110 = .90 m or 90 cm. I set the pedometer to this and set off for a walking tour of the path at China Creek Park.

One full lap of the path gave me a distance of .58 km, which is more than I thought. 10 laps would equal 5.8 km, not 5 km. (8.5 laps would be just under 5 km.)

Since I had run about 15 laps in the half hour, I’d actually covered 8.7 km — 3.7 km more than the program expected of me. I am fairly boggled by this. I knew my pace was definitely faster but I had no idea it was that much faster.

In a few weeks I’m going to try to run a full 10k, which should work out to 17 laps. I’m going to recalibrate the pedometer tomorrow to match my stride length while jogging (8 steps vs. 11) and see how far it says I run in half an hour. More to come!

30 minutes!

Started Week 8 of jogging tonight and was scheduled for 28 minutes. I like to avoid checking the time as long as possible so I don’t get bogged down by seeing I have more time left than I thought. My sense of time is pretty good so I’m usually pretty close when I check. Tonight I was jogging along merrily and when I looked I was 29 minutes into my run — oops. I decided to round it off and jogged until 30:13, completing the final goal of the 9-week program a week early.

w00t, I say. w00t.

An August occasion

August 2nd, to be specific. But more August activities in another update.

Here’s a quick rundown (geddit?) of Week 7: Redux of my jogging.

I restarted Week 7 — a straight 25-minute run — on Monday. I switched from late afternoon to early evening as we were still in the middle of a fierce heatwave. Even an hour before sunset the air was still furnace-like. As I jogged, I noted several girls in the play area and mindful of the recent past, looked upon them as the Eye of Sauron might as I jogged past them. It was apparently too hot for them to think delinquent thoughts. Really, it was too hot to jog and it was only the sweet mercy of the fountain that sustained me. I made three quick pitstops for a couple of sips of water. The problem with the fountain is you have to come to a full stop to use it and when it’s already very hot out and you yourself are also very hot, coming to a sudden stop results in your body heating up like a nuke plant. You definitely don’t dawdle.

Wednesday’s run was much the same but maybe even hotter. I went a we bit earlier because I was catching the fireworks that evening. Three pitstops once again but I managed to make it through. Both nights there were points where qutting felt like The Right Thing to Do, but I pressed on, not wanting to lag behind in the program even more.

By Friday evening the heatwave finally broke and while temperatures are still above normal, it’s now just really warm. By evening there is actually a slight cool breeze. I was curious how the lower temperature would affect my run. I ended up not making any stops and ran the full 25 minutes (plus 45 more seconds out of the park) uninterrupted. The difference was astounding. My only disappointment was a guy with a radio-controlled plane never actually flew it the whole time I was there. There was a soccer scrum in the middle of the field, so perhaps he was concerned about creating a miniature replica of an air show disaster. Several smartypants (including one guy in a kangaroo jacket — this is in weather that is over 30ºC) ran past me in great manly strides during my jog, outpacing me without trouble. Each conked out after half a lap. The kangaroo jacket guy was only wearing a t-shirt the next time he attempted the feat. I kept motoring along for a full 8 laps.

Overall, I feel I am in good shape for Week 8’s 28-minute runs if the weather doesn’t turn icky hot again.

Jogging a so-so

Wednesday’s jog didn’t happen as I was still feeling a bit too much pain in parts that would hurt even more if I was running around. It was too bad as it was overcast — perfect jogging weather.

Today it was back to sunshine and it was warm but not hot, so I decided to salvage one part of Week 7’s regimen. About 15 minutes or so into the 25 minute jog my legs turned to lead and the sun became malevolently hot. I came very close to packing it in but decided I’d try to reconstitute myself at the fountain first, assuming it had not been vandalized yet again. Good news on two counts — the fountain provided the gulp of cool water I needed and I was able to finish out the jog without further pain or discomfort. I still find it slightly amazing that I can jog for nearly half an hour without stopping now. A year ago I’d have curled up in a ball by the side of the path ten minutes in.

Since I only completed one of the three parts of Week 7, I’m planing on a re-do starting Monday before moving onto Week 8, stretching the 9 week program to a total of 10 weeks (counting my initial week of runs where I expertly botched the timing every day).

The sty is also mostly gone, too, so hooray for my body still being able to recover from junk. Excelsior!

I am the sty in the eye

Within days of each other I get both a sty in my eye and my most fun organ (hereafter referred to as my MFO) decides it is suddenly going to become infected again and no longer be in a pro state (see what I did there?) Every time I put my right foot forward I get a small jolt of pain in my abdomen. It’s great aversion therapy to keep one from walking about on a hot summer day. But I’m going for a 25-minute jog tomorrow no matter what so I insist my MFO co-operate fully in this matter and stop being a nuisance.

Whilst I strolled about today gnashing my teeth with every other step, I observed that pretty near every young male (let’s say 40 or under) had a distended belly, as if they were bodily trying to empathize with the malnourished children of some impoverished African nation. Having had this sort of prominent midriff myself until recently, I know that it is in fact a kind of malnutrition that causes this. I call it The Twinkie Diet but it goes by other names, too:

  • Ronald McDonald is My Father
  • The Sugar & Fat is Where It’s At Regime
  • Chocolate is a Food Group, Right?
  • Jolly Elf Fitness Plan
  • My Shirt Doubles as a Tent Diet

I now regard the movie WALL-E and its depiction of our future aboard the Axion as prophecy. Choose your super-reinforced hover chair today!

How to read this blog, Part 1

How to Read This Blog, Part 1
by Creole Ned

This site is divided into six categories:

  1. Dating
  2. Gaming
  3. General
  4. Health and Fitness
  5. Photos
  6. Writing

Every post has at least one category attached to it. The content of each category is as follows:

1. Dating There are no entries for this because I am writing about my dating experiences elsewhere, therefore this category should have been removed but I forgot. Oops.

2. Gaming In which I share my gaming experiences or write about games like roughly one billion other people on the web do. As I don’t game as much as before, these posts are becoming less frequent. If you are not a gamer there is probably only a 50% chance you will find my insights worth reading. I arrived at 50% by just making a number up, kind of like a review score!

3. General The inevitable catch-all category. Random nonsense about life, media and anything else that doesn’t fit into the other categories.

4. Health and Fitness Currently I lift dumbbells three times a week and jog three times a week and it is here where I chronicle my hi-jinks, ranging from pulled muscles to getting rocks thrown at me by ill-mannered children. I also chat a bit from time to time about diet and food choices. If these things don’t set your heart a-flutter, safely ignore!

5. Photos When I add images to my gallery I post about them under this heading. However, I am currently debating over how to add photos to the site and my current hodgepodge method means I’m not adding nearly as many as I could. On the one hand, entertainingly bad pictures from my youth are going unshared. On the other hand…well, the exact same thing.

6. Writing Here I talk occasionally about the process of writing and books I have read. Mainly I discuss my ongoing writing projects, whether they are exercises, short stories or one of my novels.

Now that you know more about each category you can better choose how to read through this rich tapestry I call my blog. Or just skip all this and skim for saucy words like “hooters” and “malfeasance”.

Like Lord of the Flies with estrogen

This past Wednesday I was in the middle of Week 6 of my jogging plan, a pair of 10-minute runs with a three minute walk between. The 10-minute runs are a little over three complete laps. On the second run I’m motoring along and notice about four girls at the little playground near the northern baseball diamond. Three are younger, perhaps 6 or 7. The fourth is bigger and older, probably around 10 or 11. A cursory glance makes it clear she is the leader.

As I jog by the first time, enjoying the music on my Sansa Clip, I observe the big girl leading the others in some kind of cheer that is directed at me as I go by. I can’t hear the exact words but the tone from her is unmistakably sarcastic because if there’s one thing I know, it’s the sound of sarcasm. I do a mental eyeroll, note how precocious they are and jog past them. They resume their previous activities.

The next lap the same thing happens and again I run past without acknowledging their presence. The third time and when I am on the cusp of completing my jog I go by and sure enough the cheers erupt as I move past. They are, if nothing else, devoted to their shtick. But then I feel something plinking against my back. Many little somethings. They are throwing gravel at me. I come to an immediate stop and pause for just a moment. This is where I wished I had a picture of their faces, for it is at that moment — when I had stopped and altered the course of events but had not yet made clear what was going to happen next — that I wanted to see their expressions abruptly shift from evil glee to uncertainty. I walked a few paces toward them, still being serenaded by whatever song was playing. I looked at the leader, holding her imaginary conch shell and simply said, “Don’t throw rocks at me.” I turned, finished my jog and left the park without looking back.

Now, the gravel at the playground is small so getting showered with it did not hurt at all and I’d previously witnessed a couple of kids playing the “Let’s throw rocks at each other or actually just stand there and I’ll throw rocks at you” game so the whole thing didn’t surprise me as much as it should have but I do still ponder what the goal of the leader was. Did she want to provoke a confrontation and if so, to what end? To prove her authority over the others as their superior? To establish at as early an age as possible that men suck and throwing rocks at them is about as good as it gets? The simplest explanation is that she is a budding sociopath or in the old school language, a mean kid.

Friday’s jog was to be an epic 25-minute journey but with the thermometer reaching 30C and the sun blazing mightily in that way it does, I only managed about 16 minutes or so before my head started to hurt. I had a good pace going and without the weather being so fiendishly warm I’m confident I would have made it otherwise.  The small bonus was it was too hot for any kids to be present, psychotic or not. The only others around were a few couples (the guy is always as white as physically possible, glaring like a slab of ice under the steady eye of a relentless Arctic sun) and a few other nutty joggers. Onto Week 7 Monday.

Jogging a go-go

Today I began Week 5 of my 9 week jogging plan. I approached it with some trepidation because Friday’s jog found me coming up a bit short on the last five minute segment, mostly due to the sun beating down on me like some giant hot thing and making me want to pass out. Today, however, it had cooled off and was overcast, so that wouldn’t be a problem. To further distract myself, I picked up a cheap 2GB Sansa Clip so I could focus on music rather than my lungs burning. For today’s run, which consisted of three five minute segments I chose:

  • Boney M, “Rasputin”. It’s hard to beat disco for jogging. It keeps you going. As a bonus, the song is over 5 minutes long.
  • Pink Floyd, “One Slip”. Also 5+ minutes. I actually find the lyrics of this song insipid: “Then drowned in desire, our souls on fire, I led the way to the funeral pyre” — uh, what? I can’t even begin to decipher this. It’s like someone partook of some peyote and tried to rewrite “Evil Woman” as a love song. Or something. But the song moves, Dave Gilmour plays his guitar and that’s the important part.
  • Blondie, “Atomic”. It’s good until you get to the bridge or whatever them fancy music people call it because the song slows down a lot at that point. It feels like a good place to rest, whether it is or not.
  • Bananarama, “Venus”. More disco, hooray!

The music not only provided ample distraction, I think I actually jogged faster than before and when “Rasputin” ended after the third 5-minute segment, I checked my stopwatch and found I had jogged almost a minute longer than I was supposed to. Madness!

I like it.

Why I am not an engineer

Last week I officially™ began the Couch to 5K running plan. Or so I thought. Thanks to my awesome math skills I figured I needed four circuits to complete the Week 1 jogging regimen. It turns out it was actually eight, so I now consider that to be Week 0 and began Week 1 properly this past Monday. If I was an engineer my bridges would collapse, roofs would cave in and babies somewhere would cry.

As mentioned previously I am jogging at China Creek Park. Despite the fact that there has always been a baseball game in progress (and sometimes two) I have yet to be beaned by a baseball. One did actually land on the jogging path ahead of me once on Wednesday (foul ball), making an impressive plume of bark and dirt kick up. I always keep my eye open when jogging within batting distance.

The park has been quite nice for running and so far easing into the routine has gone well. There is even a fountain ready to deliver a welcome sip of water right along the path, although on my last jog there was a half-eaten crawfish in it. Ew. When not being grossed out by fountain food, I enjoy the spirit, nay, stink of fitness that permeates the area. Every evening there have been other joggers, walkers, people doing aerobics, playing badminton, croquet or baseball or just hanging out. It makes the exercising just that smidgen more pleasant than it would be if I was humping along a sidewalk through the neighborhood.